When trying to improve your performance and generate bigger income in your business, it’s important to put your time and efforts in the right things.
Whether you operate a website or some pages on social networks, you’re probably looking to improve your results on these communication channels.
Whether you sell products or services, you’re probably looking to increase your sales.
And to do so, you try to optimize:
- the way you attract new prospects to your website or your pages
- the way you convert those prospects into clients
- the way you retain customers (create customer loyalty)
And to optimize these different steps, you try different things…
Create content that attracts new visitors, develop strategies to retain those visitors and to convert them into clients, create products that your followers will want to buy, try different offers, etc.
You test different things. You keep an eye on your metrics. And you take action from it.
And precisely, this is what we’re going to talk about in the lines below…
Once you have conducted enough tests and try enough things that you have been able to track your results, it’s time to adjust your aim in order to move in the right direction.
Now, how do you do that?
You have your metrics, all right. But how do you exploit them? How do you use them to improve your business?
Well…
You’re going to use…
The Pareto principle.
According to the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.
Put in other words, 20% of your actions bring 80% of your results.
For instance, for your website it’s likely that about 80% of your visitors comes from 20% of your pages.
Depending on your activity, it’s also likely that about 20% of your products are the cause for 80% of your income.
And depending on your activity, it’s also likely that about 20% of your clients account for 80% of your income (you probably have some clients that buy all your products, whereas other clients that only buy one of your products).
I could go on and on; the examples are countless.
Let’s go back to what we were saying above…
You have your metrics.
You’re going to look at them with the Pareto principle in mind.
Put another way, you’re going to identify the 20% that accounts for 80% of your results:
What is the type of content that brings you 80% of your prospects?
What are your products that account for 80% of your sales?
What is the profile of your clients that account for 80% of your income?
And so on.
Once you have identified the 20% of the causes that account for 80% of the effects, focus on theses causes, and spend less time and energy on the 80% of the causes that account for 20% of the effects.
Because it’s not worth spending your time on the 80% that brings only 20% of your results.
It’s worth better allocating the time and energy to what you know is bringing big results.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that you should not test new things. It simply means that if something doesn’t work, it’s useless to put time and effort into it.
It’s way better to put your energy in something that will give you results.
Focus on the 20% that brings 80% of your results.